I had some good Ravelympics training this week when I tried to bind off my first Hopscotch sock.

I borrowed a knitting instruction book from a friend at our Tuesday night Sticks’n’String meeting, and commenced happily with the bind-off, following the instructions in what I assumed was the correct manner.

Then: wierdness.

Please excuse the appalling photo; the lighting in the evenings during this Dracula weather leaves a lot to be desired. But it ought to just be possible to make out the neat row of nicely bound of stitches on the right, followed by a random change whereby the stitches on the bind off go all diagonal and ugly. I believe I, for inscrutable reasons, must have started taking the yarn around the front of the stitches rather than through them, creating some very untidy effects.

My fellow knitters assured me that nobody but me would care about this idiosyncracy but I became more and more appalled at the idea of not finishing this monumental sock project perfectly. So I unpicked the bind-off stitch by stitch, to discover that my wool had practically felted to itself during the bind-off and several hours of cursing and tinking later, and after re-doing the bind-off without wierdness, I have finished sock #1. I am delighted with it.

The cushion is one I made ages ago out of an offcut of impossibly red velvet. I love red and green together; observe the fruition of the lovely Japanese Wineberry plant against its yellowish greenish leaves and let us hop, in our one completed sock, into my garden, where I shall share some of its delights.

I can’t believe wineberry plants aren’t available in every single garden centre in the UK. They are very prolific and produce huge trusses of sweet, juicy, flavoursome berries. I love to eat them.

Luckily the wineberries are not as attractive to our latest garden visitors as the nasturtiums which are obviously delicious for these guys. You can practically hear the munching when you stand nearby.

Mark’s face lit up with delight at the thought of all the butterflies so I have forgiven them for munching through, and shitting all over, my nasturtiums.

I will only murder them if they move onto the woad, because I want to dye with it later this year. Apparently the leaf-tops from the first year’s growth are the thing for dyeing and I have happily found a recipe that does not require me to pee on this and then leave it to fester for weeks. I can apparently harvest them fresh and use them there and then for great blue effects.

The madder has produced beautiful, tiny little yellow flowers, but can’t be harvested for its scarlet roots until 2010!

…and Caroline tells me that the squashes may have cross-pollinated with the courgettes last year. The saved seed that she sent me could therefore be both or either. So I am calling these Squashkins because Pumpgette is just too hard to say.

The Manifest sunflowers which were in our MA seed-packet invitations last year, have done exceedingly well.

It is going to be a red, yellow and green kind of a day. I just started knitting this squash pattern after seeing it in the 6th food group in Ravelry. I hope to finish it today, as my warm-up Ravelympics exercise.

I really *love* the Hopscotch sock… let’s see it again.

I’m glad I re-did the bind-off.